Famous Life Death Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Life Death poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous life death poems. These examples illustrate what a famous life death poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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To You

by Walt Whitman
 WHOEVER you are, I fear you are walking the walks of dreams, 
I fear these supposed realities are to melt from under your feet and hands; 
Even now, your features, joys, speech, house, trade, manners, troubles, follies, costume,
 crimes, dissipate away from you, 
Your true Soul and Body appear before me, 
They stand forth out of affairs—out of commerce,...Read more of this...

A Farewell

by Charles Kingsley
 I

My fairest child, I have no song to give you; 
No lark could pipe to skies so dull and grey: 
Yet, ere we part, one lesson I can leave you 
For every day. 

II 

Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever; 
Do noble things, not dream them, all day long: 
And so make life, death, and...Read more of this...

No Worst There Is None. Pitched Past Pitch Of Grief

by Gerard Manley Hopkins
 No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,
More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.
Comforter, where, where is your comforting?
Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?
My cries heave, herds-long; huddle in a main, a chief
Woe, world-sorrow; on an age-old anvil wince and sing—
Then lull, then leave off. Fury had shrieked 'No ling-
ering! Let me be fell:...Read more of this...

Natures Questioning

by Thomas Hardy
 WHEN I look forth at dawning, pool,
Field, flock, and lonely tree,
All seem to look at me
Like chastened children sitting silent in a school;

Their faces dulled, constrained, and worn,
As though the master's ways
Through the long teaching days
Their first terrestrial zest had chilled and overborne.

And on them stirs, in lippings mere
(As if once clear in call,
But now scarce breathed at all)--
"We...Read more of this...

The Sphynx

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
 The Sphynx is drowsy,
Her wings are furled,
Her ear is heavy,
She broods on the world.?
"Who'll tell me my secret
The ages have kept?
? I awaited the seer,
While they slumbered and slept;?

The fate of the manchild,
The meaning of man;
Known fruit of the unknown,
Dædalian plan;
Out of sleeping a waking,
Out of waking a sleep,
Life death overtaking,
Deep underneath deep.

Erect as a sunbeam
Upspringeth the palm;
The elephant...Read more of this...

The Sphinx

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Sphinx is drowsy,
Her wings are furled:
Her ear is heavy,
She broods on the world.
"Who'll tell me my secret,
The ages have kept?--
I awaited the seer
While they slumbered and slept:--

"The fate of the man-child,
The meaning of man;
Known fruit of the unknown;
Daedalion plan;
Out of sleeping a waking,
Out of waking a sleep;
Life death overtaking;
Deep underneath deep?

"Erect as a sunbeam,
Unspringeth the palm;
The elephant browses,
Undaunted and...Read more of this...

A Woman Waits for Me

by Walt Whitman
 A WOMAN waits for me—she contains all, nothing is lacking, 
Yet all were lacking, if sex were lacking, or if the moisture of the right man were
 lacking. 

Sex contains all, 
Bodies, Souls, meanings, proofs, purities, delicacies, results, promulgations, 
Songs, commands, health, pride, the maternal mystery, the seminal milk;
All hopes, benefactions, bestowals, 
All the passions, loves, beauties, delights of...Read more of this...

crematorium-return

by Rg Gregory
 (to where the ashes of both
 my parents are strewn)

i)
ok the pair of you lie still
what's disturbing me need pass
no fretful hand over your peace
this world's vicissitudes are stale
fodder for you who feed the grass

some particles of your two dusts
by moon's wish accident or wind
may have leapt that late-life wound
refound in you the rhapsodists
first-married days had twinned

i've come today...Read more of this...

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